WASHINGTON -- House lawmakers on Wednesday grilled U.S. aviation regulators over their role in certifying and overseeing the Boeing 737 Max 8, the plane that crashed twice in recent months -- killing nearly 350 people -- due to complications with a flight-control system.

Democrats on a House aviation subcommittee pushed the hardest, pressing acting Federal Aviation Administration chief Daniel Elwell to explain how the problem was allowed to fester.

"We shouldn't have to be here today," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who leads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

He quoted a Boeing official, referring to the system known as MCAS, telling the pilots' union in November that the company tries "not to overload the crews with information that's unnecessary."

DeFazio, who pressed the need for "answers and accountability," then asked Elwell if "we really think that was unnecessary" -- that the information about MCAS "wasn't even in the manual" and the pilots "didn't know about it."

Elwell said he couldn't comment on that conversation, which was preserved by the pilots' union in a recording shared with The News. But he said that as a pilot himself, "when I first heard about this, I thought that there should've been more text in the manual about MCAS."

House lawmakers on Wednesday grilled top FAA officials over the Boeing 737 Max 8, the plane involved in two fatal crashes in recent months.

(File Photo/The Associated Press)

That exchange -- and the hearing, more broadly -- highlighted ongoing fallout for both Boeing and the FAA in the wake of the deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia.

The 737 Max 8 remains grounded across the globe as Boeing rolls out a fix to the flight-control system. That pause, in turn, has pinched Dallas-based Southwest Airlines and Fort Worth-based American Airlines, which own more of that type of plane than other U.S. carriers.

On Wednesday, Elwell sought to steady the course, underscoring areas for improvement while also defending FAA's safety record and certification process.

"The United States is the gold standard in aviation safety," he said. "The FAA is resolute in its commitment to maintaining that standard. In our quest for continuous safety improvement, the FAA welcomes external review of our systems, processes and recommendations."

He added: "The 737 MAX will return to service for U.S. carriers and in U.S. airspace only when the FAA's analysis of the facts and technical data indicate that it is safe to do so."

To that end, some key Republicans cautioned against a rush to judgment.

Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the House transportation committee's top Republican, lamented that "many appear to have already concluded that the FAA's process is to blame." He said that Congress "can and they should act" if ongoing investigations "reveal problems."

But Graves, a pilot, said any such action has to "be based on facts and not just a panicked desire to do something."

Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., was even more blunt, saying that Congress needs to "be very careful to make sure that we're not acting on emotion ... that we're operating on facts." He added that he's seen nothing to "question FAA's safety judgment to date."

There's no question, however, that both Boeing and the FAA continue to be under the microscope on Capitol Hill and beyond.

In a statement to The News, Boeing said on Monday that it's "committed to working with pilots, airlines and global regulators to safely return the updated MAX to flight once certified."

But Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, pushed the FAA on Wednesday for additional context about the meeting between Boeing and the American Airlines pilots. He asked Elwell if Boeing told the FAA about the meeting and the pilot's concerns.

"My first indication of that meeting was when I read about it in the article," Elwell responded.

Allred then asked if the FAA should've been made aware of the meeting.

Elwell, while not commenting on that specific case, said that "any time a manufacturer that the FAA has regulatory oversight over becomes aware of a critical safety item, it should be made known to the FAA."

Allred responded that "if we've had a crash and our professional pilots here domestically are expressing their concerns, that's something the FAA should know about." Elwell didn't disagree, though he also added that he's been in regular contact with the pilots' unions since the crashes.

Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, said that "if we've had a crash and our professional pilots here domestically are expressing their concerns, that's something the FAA should know about."

But across the Capitol, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Steve Dickson, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next FAA chief, that there had been a " serious breakdown in the certification process," according to Politico. The Texan also accused the FAA of "agency capture" by Boeing.

"Bureaucratic inertia is powerful," said Cruz, a Republican who leads a Senate aviation subcommittee "What I'm asking you to do, if confirmed, is: Be pissed off that 346 people died."

He said that over the course of some 50,000 flights done by the 737 Max 8, the FAA received 24 reports from pilots related to "some sort of anomaly on pitch." He said that "none of those reports were related to the MCAS" -- the flight-control system cited as a cause in the two fatal crashes.

"We scan and filter every one of those flights for evidence that there were MCAS ... anomalies in the U.S. fleet," he said, again reiterating that the FAA found no reports of that kind. "That is was FAA needs to do and what we did."